


in winter's shallows

by thebeespatella



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Discussed in the context of therapy, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21589879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/pseuds/thebeespatella
Summary: "He’s an FBI agent. My dad was a murderer. It looked like he was going to kill me too. Will did the right thing.”Bedelia leans in, a small shift of a thing—like the second hand on a clock. “Is that what you were told to say?” she asks. “Or is that what you tell yourself?”--Bedelia is Abigail's therapist instead of Alana, with mixed results.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 28
Collections: #HanniBelles2019





	1. Chapter 1

“Abigail,” Hannibal says, motioning for her to stand in front of him, then puts a large hand on her shoulder. “This is Dr. du Maurier.” The girl stands stock-still, eyes urgent and dark with observation. The gauzy neatly-knotted scarf at her throat—crimson, but floral—is at odds with the rest of her clothes—clearly, a new addition. They watch each other for a moment, until she decides to move first. 

“Bedelia du Maurier,” she says, stepping forward and extending a hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Abigail shakes it like too firm a grasp will turn Bedelia into smoke. “Any of it good?”

The truth is a syrupy thing as she says, “Hannibal can't say enough on your behalf.” 

“At least you heard it from Hannibal, and not the news.” The girl smiles, quick and too easy. The light dusting of freckles on her face and her wide blue eyes—Hannibal could not have found a better palette for innocence if he’d tried. But that was his way, effortlessly navigating every bloody turn of the labyrinth. 

Graham is standing at Hannibal’s shoulder, glowering at Bedelia. He’s a strange brand of uncouth that she doesn’t encounter often nor encourage—understanding of etiquette, but negligent of its practice. Not to say she isn’t sympathetic: he is wary, nervous for the girl. The glower is simply a matter of principle, and—well. Bedelia has never been one to fault a man for his principles. 

She shifts her gaze from Hannibal, back to the girl.

“I guess it doesn’t matter if they’re good or not,” Abigail says. “If I’m supposed to be telling you everything anyway.”

“If you find yourself comfortable with me,” she says. “I prefer my relationships with my patients to emerge at their own pace.”

Hannibal looks excruciatingly pleased with himself. The coordinated plaid of his suit and paisley tie are peeking out from beneath the lapels of his camel coat, the bones of his hands almost delicate in the sunlight. The angles of his face are only starker in the brightness. “Well,” he says. “I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted.” Graham leans in to say something to Abigail, lips parting softly, but thinks better of it and just nods at her instead. They exit the room, Hannibal opening the door to let Graham through first. Their footsteps fade away, and only then does Bedelia speak. 

“Shall we?”

They sit opposite each other in the plastic chairs in the visiting room. Port Haven is the sort of psychiatric facility that believes in the healing power of greenery. Bedelia does her best to ignore the peeling edges of the bland wallpaper and the harsh streaks of rubber on the linoleum floors. The chair creaks when she puts her weight in it, and she presses her lips together for a moment. 

Abigail looks at her. “So, you’re Hannibal’s friend?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Bedelia answers, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle in her skirt, crossing her legs. She knows her elegance speaks for itself; she has developed her carriage to do exactly that. And this girl, barely bursting into adulthood, from some backwater place in the Midwest—tucks her knees closer together with a downward flick of her eyes. “I am his colleague, and his therapist, on occasion.”

Abigail considers this. “Shrinks have shrinks.”

“Yes.”

“So you have one, too?”

“I am retired.”

“Oh.” Abigail takes a moment, folding her hands in her lap, trying to come up with a polite way to worm in her curiosity. Bedelia waits. “I bet it’s pretty exhausting,” Abigail says finally. “Especially if you’re working with people like me all the time.”

_Clever girl_. “I didn’t specialize in trauma. But I have experience with it.”

Bedelia sits back in her chair as she watches Abigail mull over that ambiguity as well. 

“If you’re retired…you’re not taking on new patients.”

“I don’t actively seek them. But—as a favor to Hannibal.”

“So,” Abigail says. “You’re here on a debt?”

“No. I granted the favor because I respect him as a colleague and appreciate him as a...patient.”

“So it has nothing to do with me. Personally.”

“Well, your case is complicated.” Bedelia pauses. There is no space in her home or her mind for splashy tabloid covers and the garishness of Freddie Lounds’s reporting, but she passes magazine racks and waiting room televisions like everybody else. This girl sitting across from her was stained with blood, but clearly determined to scrub it out as soon as possible. 

Bedelia considers. Red isn’t a bad color on her. 

“Here to get your kicks? Rubberneck at the Shrike’s daughter—”

“Abigail.” It’s the first time Bedelia has used her name. “Do I seem particularly interested in your father?”

“Not yet.”

“You’re convinced that your family is the most interesting part of you.” The girl is wise at silences, used to distributing them deliberately. “Hannibal confessed to me”—here, Abigail leans in, on that vulnerable word—“that he feels responsible for you. As such, he would find it difficult to treat you.”

“‘Responsible’?”

“He was present when your father—died.”

“But he didn’t kill my dad. He saved my life. Or, that’s what they tell me.” Abigail sits back. Her hands remain folded but they curl like the edges of burning paper. “Will shot my dad.”

“I have not spoken to Mr. Graham on the matter, but I imagine he feels responsible, too.”

“He should,” Abigail retorts. 

“He also saved your life, in a manner of speaking.” The placid waters of Abigail’s face are stirring. Bedelia can feel the moment ripening: when some secret passes the girl’s lips, and then she will feel that her intimacy is indentured to Bedelia’s ears alone. Some people call it trust, but in Bedelia’s experience, fear is far more powerful. Fear of exposure. Fear of disclosure. Fear of the next moment—tripping over the next, and the next, and the next with its indelible realities. 

“He found us,” Abigail says. “He tracked us down. Maybe he’s the one who called on the phone. I don’t know how. One minute it was quiet, and then my mom’s throat was slashed. And then—”

“Tell me about that moment.”

“What?”

A pause. She must tread carefully now. “Remember,” she says, “I am not interested in your father. I am interested in your experience, your thoughts. Have you explored yourself at all?”

Surprisingly, Abigail turns a little pink, a peony tinge in her cheeks. “N-no. I mean, I remember…I remember what happened, but I can’t really—” Her hands clench fully now, nails making curved creases in her skin. She closes her eyes, to brace against her own words: “All I remember is that sound. My mom trying to breathe, and just, that horrible gurgling sound. The blood in her throat, and just choking, and choking, until she made it outside.Then Will came into the room, and my dad put the knife to my neck. I don’t remember—”

Bedelia unfolds, re-crosses her legs. 

“I remember. Not wanting to sound like my mom.”

“It is not an easy way to pass,” says Bedelia. 

“And then Will shot my dad. Like, ten times. More. He must’ve emptied the magazine.”

“Have you discussed this with Mr. Graham?”

Abigail shakes her head. 

“Have you considered it?”

“And what am I supposed to say?” Abigail snaps. “‘Hey, Will, is this a good time? I want to talk about how you killed my dad.’”

“Is it the death that bothers you,” Bedelia says, “or the shooting?”

“What?”

“He didn’t need to empty the magazine. Is that what bothers you?”

“Yes—I mean—no—he was just doing his job. He’s an FBI agent. My dad was a murderer. It looked like he was going to kill me too. Will did the right thing.” Flat as an event horizon. 

Bedelia leans in, a small shift of a thing—like the second hand on a clock. “Is that what you were told to say?” she asks. “Or is that what you tell yourself?”

“You’re not supposed to lie in therapy,” Abigail says, mouth turning in a small smile. 

“Lying isn’t always directed by intention,” Bedelia answers. 

“Well, I’m not lying. On purpose. I know he did the right thing. It’s just—hard.” As quick as it came, the smile is gone again, and Abigail is looking resolutely at the leather curve of Bedelia’s shoes. Her voice sounds rough, like she’s stuffing tears back down her throat. 

“What’s difficult, Abigail?”

“What isn’t?” 

Bedelia gives her a long look. Not that patients hadn’t regularly frittered away their time—how else would she have stayed sane and solvent?—but because this time, she wants an answer. 

“Everybody thinks I helped my dad kill those girls.” The words are caged against the inside of her teeth, a thousand frantic insects; the girl is desperate to get them out. “And I just want it all to stop. I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to have to wear fucking scarves anymore—”

Bedelia’s mouth thins, a small thing, but she knows the girl is watching for anything. 

“What?” Abigail moves so she barely rests on the edge of the chair, getting as close as possible to Bedelia, her hands like claws on her knees. “My family’s dead, and you have a fucking problem with my fucking language?”

“What do you think you will gain by provoking me?” Bedelia says, voice as soft as ivory silk. “Would you speak like this to Hannibal?” 

It’s almost unbearably crude but effective. Abigail retreats back into the plastic shell of her chair. “It’s hard to find other words,” she mumbles. 

“Well. Perhaps that can be your assignment for next week,” Bedelia says. “Come to an understanding of how you want to express yourself.”

“So—we can talk about my _feelings_ some more?”

“You say that word with such disdain,” Bedelia says. “Give them credit. Allow yourself to feel. It may be overwhelming. But I would encourage you not to gird yourself. Vulnerability is not always a weakness.”

Abigail doesn’t bother to give an answer she doesn’t have, but her brow is slightly furrowed in focus. Her eyes snap up as Bedelia stands. “Okay. Thank you,” she says, automatic.

Bedelia grants her a small, tight smile and gathers her coat and purse. Only when she gets to the door does she turn, for a moment, to say, “Oh, and Abigail?”

The girl’s head jumps up. 

“Do stop running away. As you are now officially under my care, I would appreciate it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Self-harm, suicidal ideation, and diagnoses are discussed in the context of a therapy session, as hypotheticals. Mention of rape, but it didn't happen to the characters.

Hilariously, Graham and Hannibal drive Abigail to her second appointment, at Bedelia’s house, having received a special dispensation. As though they were a little family, sending her off to her first day at kindergarten. They linger in the doorway a moment, where Bedelia looks pointedly at Hannibal.  
  
“No packed lunch?” she asks.  
  
“I am grateful that you have also seen the potential in Abigail that we have seen,” Hannibal says. Graham doesn’t bother with niceties, hands jammed in his coat pockets like he’s burrowing for spare change.

Well. In that old coat, he just might be.  
  
“Fifty minutes,” Bedelia says. “As per usual.”

“Of course,” Hannibal says, inclining his sleek head.  
  
Bedelia’s mouth twitches. Graham looks up at Hannibal’s shadow-shaped face, then back at her, not quite meeting her eyes as light flashes briefly across his glasses.  
  
“We’ll be outside,” he grumbles, and she’s surprised he doesn’t physically haul Hannibal out the door by the fur-lined collar.  
  
So now she and Abigail stand alone in the entryway. The bleak light of early fall only makes her hair darker and her skin paler. “Come in.” She leads the way to her sitting room, hearing Abigail shuffle behind her. “Would you like some water?”

“No, thank you.”  
  
Bedelia turns to look at her. The girl is standing with good posture, coat neatly folded over her arms, but there is something meeker about her. Perhaps Hannibal had given her a lecture on rudeness. It is an odd obsession of his, like a vocation. He’s just shy of an obsessive-compulsive diagnosis, not that she would ever tell him. He’d only pretend to have already known.  
  
Bedelia sits in one of her generous chairs, and Abigail mirrors her, carefully setting her coat aside.  
  
“Mr. Graham drove you here today,” Bedelia says.  
  
“Hannibal drove,” Abigail replies immediately. “But it was Will’s idea.”

At least, Graham thought it was his idea. Bedelia clears her throat, fiddles with her necklace for a moment.  
  
The idea that she’d fussed over her appearance any more than usual this morning is, of course, utterly preposterous, but she had given some thought to strategy. How did she want the girl? Too much, and Abigail might clam up—but too gentle, and Bedelia would lose much of her personal aura, and a little extra aura never hurt anyone. So she’d settled on pearls. They sit heavy on her skin as she feels Abigail’s eyes drawn to her fingers. 

She puts her hands in her lap.  
  
“He seems to care about you,” she says.  
  
Abigail nods. “He—he does. He spent a lot of time in my hospital room while I was out. Making sure I was okay, I guess.”

“How does that make you feel?”

There’s a mild glance of a glare there as Abigail just shrugs, tests the temptation to spit the words back at her. “I don’t know.”  
  
“Has he ever made you…uncomfortable?”

As though she’s been stung, Abigail stiffens and draws back. “What’re you saying?”

“I’m not insinuating anything,” Bedelia mollifies. “We discussed, to some extent, your feelings about your father’s death, and the role Mr. Graham played.”

Her hackles come down gradually. “Will checks on me. He brings me things to read. He listens.”

“I’m here to listen,” Bedelia says, before she can help herself.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Abigail says. “But that’s your job. Will listens even though he doesn’t have to.”

“And is that preferable to you?”

“I used to think so. But then—sometimes you need a professional—you have to stop buying Drano and just call the plumber, you know?” She smiles at her own little metaphor, almost shy. She has been spending far too much time with Hannibal.  
  
But Bedelia also imagines how lost some of Abigail’s references must be on Hannibal, and nearly lets go of a smile. “Yes,” she says, “and I am more than glad to be your...plumber.”

Abigail laughs. “You better hope I’m not a toilet.”

“You’re not a toilet,” Bedelia says.  
  
“I know,” she says, but it’s automatic like the snap of necks or bubblegum.  
  
“Do you?” She pauses. “Many people make the mistake of thinking that the act of being in therapy is enough.” She pauses and watches the way the shadows shift under the girl’s eyes. “But it requires more than observation. It requires participation. And are you—prepared? To participate, to be present?”

“I think so.” Abigail amends; her hand goes up to her neck. Her scarf today is light pink silk, with a gentle dotted pattern. Bedelia can see it, in its flat elegant box, passing from Hannibal’s hands to the girl’s own. “I’ve never been in therapy before. I don’t know.”

“I don’t require a commitment to anything except honesty,” Bedelia says. “An honest attempt at treatment, and honest answers to my questions.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to lie in therapy,” Abigail repeats, the words and the smile.  
  
Bedelia allows herself a small turn of her lips. “It doesn’t stop people from doing it as often as they can get away with it.”

“It shouldn’t make sense,” Abigail says. “But I understand why people do it.”

“And why is that?”

That blush again, a ruddier tinge than the cool slip of her scarf. “Because they’re scared. They don’t want you to judge them.”

“Are you afraid of my judgment?”

“I—”

Bedelia watches the girl’s eyes look at her pearls, her nails, and the sharp leather pointed toe of her shoe.

“A little bit,” Abigail says. “You’re very…” Her hands twist in her lap like white eels. The cuticles are uneven with nibbling, the nails short and bare on unexpectedly elegant fingers. The shadows of the shallow dips of her knees meld as the girl presses her legs tightly together underneath the hem of her skirt. “I don’t know.”

She arches a brow, uncrosses her legs so her heel settles on the floor with a crisp click. “What don’t you know?”

“Just—are all psychiatrists like this?” Abigail says, a little loud, and only gaining in vehemence. “You and Hannibal, just—dressed like that, and do you ever talk like normal people? Ever?”

“Part—”

“It’s just—it’s so sick in there, and if I don’t use my inside voice it’s a fucking tragedy—are you gonna be mad at me for that one, too—and I’m not insane, it’s insane, okay, it’s insane, I’m just done waiting—waiting for me to breathe wrong—I thought that was over, I thought that was over—” She stands up suddenly.  
  
“Going somewhere?”

It comes out awful, too slick, too hard, and Abigail lowers herself back down. Staccato breaths are just short of rattling through her frame, but she can’t just flick her eyes down and fold her hands in her lap and pretend it didn’t happen—she’s looking Bedelia right in the eye, a laser-honed blue.

“You feel trapped,” Bedelia amends. 

“No shit,” Abigail mutters, and then her mouth does a quick flicker toward regret. “Yes, I feel trapped. People watching me all the time, waiting for me to do something crazy.”

“Something crazy,” Bedelia muses, feels the corners of the word in her mouth. “Such as?”

“They check me for sharp objects every night.”

“That’s routine for any psychiatric facility.”

“Most people, they don’t want them to hurt themselves.” Abigail halts. “I think they’re scared that I’m going to hurt other people.”

“Have you thought about it?” The question catches the girl sideways, pushing her eyes down at a careful angle. How she’s learned to hide.

“Hurting other people, or hurting myself?”

“Both.”

Abigail gives her a well-worn exasperated look, one she might’ve given her mother over pancakes, her father over Sunday dinner. It’s as old as she feels and as young as she seems. “I don’t want to hurt other people,” she says. “And I don’t want to hurt myself. Not the way you, they—everybody means it. The nightmares come anyway. Cutting myself isn’t going to stop that.”

“Tell me about the nightmares.”

“I woke up gasping,” Abigail says. “They’d intubated me. What’s another scar on my neck? That was how I came back to the world. I couldn’t breathe. It’s like a different world.”

“Were you happy to be resurrected?”

“Sometimes—sometimes I think it would have been better if I had died.” A dip in her voice, a waver like a delicate divot between vertebrae. She looks back at Bedelia. “And _no_ ”—she draws it out—“I don’t have a plan. And I don’t think about killing myself, anyway. Like I said. They’re all dead now. He’s dead now. It would only have been useful to die if it—so he didn’t have to kill them.”

 _Useful. Have to._ Bedelia files the words away for later perusal. “I’m glad to hear you aren’t entertaining thoughts of suicide.”

Abigail snorts, rare, unguarded. “Is there something entertaining about suicide?”

“You’re right,” Bedelia says. “I misspoke.”

“But you didn’t.” And she makes fixed eye contact again. “You said exactly what you meant. You don’t think I’d kill myself.”

“That is the extent of the system. I must trust my patient, if she proves herself to be credible.”

“I’m being honest.”

“And do you think about hurting other people?”

“I think about it. I don’t want to.”

“Those are two separate impulses.” Bedelia pauses, puts her words down like cards. “It is highly perceptive of you to recognize them as individual states.” Lays the praise down like an ace.

Abigail goes predictably still. Prey will freeze in the grass, stock-still, at the whisper of a threat—but so will a seasoned hunter. Both rely on shadows for disguise. “You’re the one that told me,” she says, “that things aren’t always directed by intention.”

“No,” Bedelia says, pushing amiability to the top of her voice. “What you are experiencing are intrusive thoughts. They are relatively common in those with anxiety or compulsive disorders. But they are merely a symptom; it does not indicate the presence of either or both.”

“No, I’m—I can’t live like this, it’s not normal.”

“Common; not normal.”

“So I am psycho,” Abigail says. “I’ve just got a lot of company.”

“You are traumatized, not disordered. And I would encourage you to think of it that way.”

“What’s the difference.” 

“Trauma is an event,” Bedelia says. “Disordered is a state of being. Traumatic things have happened to you, Abigail. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you.”

“But something is wrong with me,” Abigail says. “I’ve got—intrusive thoughts, and I think about—I just think about what it would be like, not about doing it, but just what it might be like—”

“You’re not him.” Bedelia is not in the habit of interrupting her patients—the less she talks, usually the better (except for Hannibal, who insists on having _engaged dialogue_ )—but there’s a wildfire in Abigail’s voice that she wants to tend. 

“And how do you know.” The girl clenches her jaw against the quiver. Slowly, her fingers spread back out, and she leans back into the armchair, taking up its full space. Then she swings one leg over the other, skirt riding up in crème inches of angles. “How can anybody know. My dad went to work and killed girls at night. Picked me up from school. Brought my mom flowers. It was the flowers that tipped her off. She thought he was having an affair.” Her white teeth bare in a barked laugh. “He was seeing girls, all right. All the girls he could want. Could do anything he wanted to them.”

Bedelia considers the brittle edges of Abigail’s headlong defiance. The scarf, the skirt. The way she’s costumed herself. “You’ve convinced yourself that you are much more afraid than you actually are.”

“I’m terrified,” Abigail fires back.

“Not of your father.”

“He’s dead. There isn’t a lot to be scared of anymore.”

“But the long shadow he casts.”

Abigail closes her eyes and breathes even and deep. Her eyelashes are fluttering like unsettled birds as she collects her answer. “Nothing will be the same.” 

A silence wafts into the room, an invisible perfume that sits heavy in the ear. 

“Do you want it to be the same?”

“I don’t—I don’t know.” 

They’re nearing the end of the session but Abigail has struck another match. It’s preferable that at the end of a session there’s nothing left but an ember for the patient to consider—ashes transformed, the burning flame of raw emotion and circumstance cultivated into warmth.

“It is my opinion,” Bedelia says, “that it might benefit you to see me more often.”

“What?”

“Have you been to the group sessions?”

Abigail’s frame collapses back into itself. Bedelia finds herself sorry to see it go. “I hate group,” Abigail says into her chest. “What am I supposed to say—’Sorry you were raped, but I watched my dad slit my mom’s throat’?” She opens her mouth to say something else, but is suspended in the debris of her own words and she looks at the floor. “I know. I’m a terrible person.”

“People who have undergone difficult situations often find it difficult to empathize with others, especially traumas similar to theirs. Your thoughts may be—less than charitable, but they’re a product of your circumstances.”

“Or maybe,” Abigail says, looking back up at her, sails filling a little, “I’m just a raging psychopath.”

“I’ve met sociopaths,” Bedelia says. _Well, at least one._ “What makes you think you might be one of them?”

“I can’t remember what it’s like to feel—well, I was going to say empathy. But I can’t remember what it’s like to feel anything except for remembering.” 

“Abigail.” Bedelia leans forward. The empty cup of Abigail’s hand is soft and close, and for a moment she can’t help but look at it—the space just loose enough to hold the small bird of her nervousness. She feels, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, the flexibility of the moment before her (the seconds before the plunge)—that she could press her thumb in, swift, and change Abigail’s shape. The silent snap of the bones of time under the relentless tread of itself. “Often, you will feel mired in memory. I am here to help guide you—to embrace the implications of the memory, but not to get lost. The distinction is real and separable.”

“Real and separable,” Abigail echoes. “Like oil and water.”

“There are those who would seek to emulsify them,” Bedelia says. “I can only hold your hand—I cannot walk the coals myself.”

“Mayonnaise,” Abigail says, and then she smiles, like the unclenching of a white-knuckled fist. “It’s—nothing. From home economics—mayonnaise is the example they give for an emulsion.”

And, _oh_ , the present tense. “And you’re not—for consumption.” She intends for it to come out lighter. But Abigail returns with a bigger smile.

“Did Will tell you? About Freddie Lounds.” 

“I was told that she visited you. An egregious oversight by the staff.” 

“Are you really worrying about that stuff?”

“Should I be?”

“Maybe,” Abigail says, with a tilt of her head, a playful thing.

Bedelia leans back to tap her polished nails once against the armrest of her chair, quiet and a tell nonetheless. “You can’t go back,” she says. “Once something’s in print, be it even in such a rag as Tattlecrime, there is permanence. The public will not be forgiving if you change your mind.”

“You sound bitter.”

She wants to smile at the hospital-sharp corners of the jab, but manages to keep it to herself. “There is only—a lack of attention to nuance in Freddie Lounds’ brand of journalism. Documentation is not equal to truth.”

“Hm.” It’s not quite a dismissive noise, but it’s a close thing. “And I should always tell the truth, is that it?”

“I am in no position to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.”

“You’re my therapist.”

“Yes; a therapist. Not a parent,” Bedelia says, lets it razor-bleed through her teeth just enough. “I will only say: there may be a time when you might want the truth to be more malleable to the circumstances. To ossify the truth is to eliminate other paths that are still open to you.”

“So, keep my options open,” Abigail says, eyes narrowing. “Keep the truth flexible.”

“It is up to you what version of yourself you want to be available to the public. Of course,” she adds, “I am not the public.”

“I’ll think about it.” 

“That’s all I ask.”A featherweight bridge, spinning in thin air between them like spider silk—to ask, the power to grant a request. Bedelia must admit to curiosity. “I will discuss additional sessions with Port Haven.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

It’s dull and reflexive. In a wild moment, Bedelia yearns to rattle the pictures of convention loose from under the slip of Abigail’s tongue. And she suspects—the girl wants the same.


End file.
